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A father is furious after his son was denied a school lunch. The reason? He was short 26 cents on his lunch card.

“In front of all his classmates, his lunch was taken from him and thrown in the trash,” father Jimmie Keys told our sister station KCPQ.

To make matters worse, Keys’ son was supposed to get a substitute meal but that never happened.

The school district in Kent, Wash., said they were wrong and they are sorry.

“As a father, as a citizen, as a taxpayer, as a person, this is not the way we are supposed to be,” district spokesman Chris Loftis told KCPQ.

Stock image of a school lunch

With summer break ahead, the district changed its system recently to encourage parents to pay outstanding meal debts. But they failed to notify parents, including the Keys family.

As a result of this incident, the district has revamped their accounting system so that all parents are notified once their child’s lunch card gets to $1.

In the past, the district lost nearly $30,000 in one school year because of unpaid meals. So it’s important they collect as much as they can, but again they say this one case was not handled appropriately.